The CrossCore® Lat Row Progression, or “Reverse 180”, begins as a single arm row, then progresses into a single arm row with hip rotation and then finally finishes as the “Reverse 180”. Both the CrossCore® Lat Row Progression and Chest Press Progression can be done with varying degrees of hip rotation by keeping the feet pointed straight ahead as you rotate the hips or pivot the feet to keep the spine more properly aligned. But no matter your foot placement preference, you gotta PULL THE PIN! www.crosscore-usa.com
CrossCore® Multi-Purpose Racks are a customizable and affordable racking solution that are perfect for garage gyms, schools, clubs, military and everywhere else. They are all built in the USA with only heavy-duty commercial materials. Looking for a heavy-duty and customizable yet very affordable racking solution? Check out the CrossCore® line of racks today http://
CrossCore® Training and Education Program is now accredited through The American Council on Exercise (ACE). If you would like to become certified in CrossCore® Rotational Bodyweight Training™ or become a CrossCore Host Facility, please sign up today http://
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This new expandable line of functional training racks can be used for CrossCore Rotational Bodyweight training or circuit training. These racks are all commercial grade and can be used for residential, commercial, military and rehabilitation applications. www.crosscore-usa.com
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A few thoughts on CrossCore® Rotational Bodyweight Training™ for kids:
- Bodyweight (including suspended bodyweight) training is much more beneficial for children who are first beginning to do any sort of strength training. It’s much safer for them to learn to use their own bodyweight as the resistance as compared to lifting weights (i.e., external loads such as dumbbells, free weights, etc…). Resistance is increased or decreased by simply increasing or decreasing the angle in which they’re standing/positioned.
- The CrossCore® enables them to work on their balance due to the locking/unlocking pulley system. This feature allows them to progress at their own rate. “Pin In” to begin (more stability) and “Pin Out” (less stable).
- The ability to clip the handles into the top of the unit allows for assisted pull ups, which we know most kids (and most adults) can’t do. This allows them to progressively get stronger by supporting the lower body.
- As compared to strength training – age really depends. With most bodyweight exercises children could start as early as 8. You look at children who are involved in gymnastics – they start at even younger ages and are completely bodyweight training. Rule of thumb for strength training is anywhere between 12-14 (depends on the child and their maturity). However, bodyweight training really is a much safer alternative for kids and many adults.
- It also depends on what they’re looking to accomplish with the children. Are they less active or overweight? Are they new to any sort of exercise? There are a ton of variables that play a part in even the design of the program for them.
Cruise by Rancho Cienga Park, Kenneth Hahn Park, or any local park in Los Angeles, and you will see people pretty much roll out their own gym as they unload all kind of workout equipment.
Not everybody created their buns of steel, 6-pack abs, or well defined body by battling through rush hour traffic to get to a gym or waiting for their turn to finally come on the bench press. Many people have ditched the gym membership and invested in their own equipment, and they are getting the same benefits without the hassle of the big gyms.
"Sometimes I'm unable to get to the gym, but I don't want to use that as an excuse," said Anthony Cephas, who performs advanced calisthenics. "Instead of going to the gym, I can always get in a workout. My home, backyard. I don't have to worry about waiting in line, or wiping down the equipment because it's mine."
The gym does have some advantages, but people can easily overcome them, and get in a great workout without all of the bells and whistles that corporate gyms have.
"Only thing that you can't do is heavy, heavy weights," Cephas said. "Unless you're into bodybuilding, where you'd have to lift a lot of weight, you do not need all of that equipment. If you want to get stronger and have a nice physique, there's different methods. Everyone thinks that you have to lift heavy, but that's just not true."
Cephas is a muscular guy. He has maintained his size and strength with his own equipment, which has saved him a lot of money, and by using mostly body weight exercises.
"You buy your own equipment and it is yours for life," Cephas said. "You don't have to worry about dues or membership fees or anything else. This is really convenient for me."
A few pieces of equipment, coupled with a pull-up bar and bleacher steps at a park, gives a person all of the tools that they need to build strength and finely tune their bodies. Equipment such as the medicine ball, large rubber bands, a balance ball, and the ab wheel can all be easily transported, and they are all relatively inexpensive. For an even more intense workout, and to make all of the other weekend warriors at the park jealous, suspension systems and homemade equipment can take a workout to the next level.
The medicine ball is one of the most useful pieces of equipment on the market because it can be effectively used to build and tone the upper and lower body by throwing it, lifting it, or holding it above your head while performing squats and lounges.
“You don’t have to follow the structure of a machine, a dumbbell, or a bar,” said trainer Robb Rogers. “You can throw it, you can chop it, you can lift it, you can twist it, and make several different movements. You can do a lot of those movements with a plate, or a small dumbbell, but you are not going to release it. That’s where the beauty of the medicine ball comes into play. With the medicine ball, and with something that you can step on, like a park bench, now I can do everything. I can push, I can pull, I can throw, I can chop, I can lift, I can twist, I can squat, I can step, I can sprint, and I can jump. There’s not a whole lot left for me to do.”
Large rubber bands can be found hanging from pull-up bars at every CrossFit gym. The bands are extremely helpful for people who are beginners at pull-ups, which is a staple for bodyweight exercising. As a person gets stronger doing the movement with the band, they start doing the pull-ups without it.
The bands can also be used for chest and leg workouts. For the chest, a person can wrap the band around their back, holding the band in both hands, and perform pushups, which is pretty difficult because of the weight added by the band. For legs, a person can wrap the band around their shoulders and hold it down with their feet, and perform squats.
Everybody wants a flat stomach. The ab wheel, which hit the scene through informercials, promised 6-pack abs and major weight loss in less than 20 minutes a day. The claims may have been outlandish, because that one piece of equipment cannot take the place of an entire diet and exercise program. But when used as one of many tools, the ab wheel is actually extremely effective.
The ab wheel effectively works outs the core muscles, and the shoulders, triceps, and hip flexors get some action too. The nature of the movement causes a person to have to use their stabilizer muscles to a much greater degree than doing normal sit-ups and crunches.
For greater stabilizing exercises, the balance ball will hit the spot. Working out on a balance ball, instead of a flat surface, forces a person to have to contract more muscles to balance themselves, instead of a bench doing the balancing work for them. There a several different positions that can be used on the balance ball to work the upper and lower body, and the core muscles.
For next level type workouts, suspension systems, such as the TRX, work extremely well. The equipment can be attached to pull-up bars, and can be used for total body training. Cephas swears by the CrossCore 180, which he says is "like the TRX, but on steroids." The CrossCore 180 has a pulley system that adds even more instability, and works out the muscle to a greater degree.
Cephas has also made his own equipment using PVC pipes. He made parallettes, which he uses for pushups, dips, and because he does advanced calisthenics, he performs handstands on them. For about $35 for materials, the parallettes can be made, easily transported, and but used for various type of upper body and core work. The parallettes can also be combined with suspension equipment and bands.
Also, do not forget about warming up properly, so do not forget to toss a foam roller in the trunk. This self-myofacial release roller can make a big difference by making the soft tissue surrounding the muscles more flexible. The roller can decrease the chances of injury, and enhance athletic performance.
Another benefit to owning transporting equipment is that it can be taken on trips out of town. Cephas said that he always takes his CrossCore 180 and large rubber bands with him, and he can get in his workouts right from his hotel room.
For anybody looking to get in great shape without a gym membership, a lot of junk in your trunk can get you to your goals.
Nautilus XPload Zone Training System - The XPload Zone is a REVOLUTION in truss training equipment! This rugged all-steel anchoring system allows up to 10 users to anchor CrossCore® Rotational Bodyweight Training Systems™ and other suspension straps. Overhead reinforcement allows for anchoring of heavy bags for boxing and MMA training as well as monkey bar overhead suspended ladder training. Each side frame features six steel anchor points positioned at high, mid, and low points for anchoring power conditioning heavy ropes and resistance tubes.
CrossCore180® versus Free-weights
The upstart portable takes on the heavyweight champion of resistance training
By Marty Gallagher
Coach, Team USA, IPF world team powerlifting champions; IPF world masters powerlifting champion
Imagination is the only limitation
Fitness defined: Why do we go to all the time, trouble, expense and effort to include fitness into the overwhelmingly complex matrix of our already complicated lives? In most cases, the motivation to commence a fitness regimen springs from a profound dissatisfaction with our body, our physique, our external self. Because of this dissatisfaction, we seek to favorably alter the composition and configuration of our physique using fitness modes and methods. By engaging in an effective fitness regimen, one that produces tangible results, we improve our body and simultaneously improve our health, well-being and quality of life. We want to look and feel better as a result of our fitness efforts. In almost every instance these transformational hopes and dreams never come to fruition, for a wide variety of easily understandable reasons.
Finding the right fitness method, an effective fitness method, is akin to finding a proverbial needle in the fitness haystack. There are a legion of competing fitness theories, strategies, methods and gurus, all telling you that they alone have the magical method or mode. With so many possibilities and choices, how does a regular person leading a regular life find the true expert, the legitimate tool, the truly effective method? Here is an inconvenient truth: 99% of fitness methods, modes, tools and products flat do not work. Want proof? If even 10% of the commercially available fitness products and systems worked, this nation would be overrun with muscled-up, leaned-out bodies…the opposite is true: we are overrun with flaccid, out-of-shape, skinny-fat bodies. Every fitness product needs to generate sales in order to survive and the eternal temptation is to make exaggerated claims about the results derived from use of the product.
The first step in transforming oneself from flaccid into fit, from fat into fantastic, is to define results: what exactly can we realistically expect from our fitness efforts? What methods work? How long and how often do I need to train? How best do I utilize my available training time? How long do I need to wait before I start seeing results? How long until I have achieved the complete physical transformation I see in my mind’s eye? These are all legitimate questions: the problem is unscrupulous product makers will entice a sale by suggesting that the use of their magical potion, product or system will allow you, the purchaser, to shortcut or completely avoid the time, discipline and intense physical effort that invariably accompanies a true transformation. When pondering the dilemma that is transformative fitness, it is critical that we identify what constitutes real results. What is the irreducible core goal of real, result-producing fitness? What is it we seek, at a fundamental level?
We cannot obtain a thing or attain a thing if we cannot define that thing.
Ultimately, all the diets and all the various types of exercise, all the nutritional supplements, legitimate or bogus, all the experts, real and imagined, all the exercise equipment, all the best selling diet books and infomercials touting fitness products – all of it is designed to improve the shape, configuration and composition of your body. To achieve a true transformation we need…
- A dramatic increase in lean muscle mass
- A dramatic reduction in body fat
Fitness, ultimately, is about building muscle, reducing body fat or some combination of both. If somehow we were to suddenly become leaner and stronger we would reap a cornucopia of physical and physiological benefits. When we become leaner and stronger we automatically improve all of our measurable physical capacities and benchmarks. Leaner and stronger means we are able to run faster, jump higher, leap further, go longer, go harder…we improve stamina, mobility, agility, you name an athletic attribute and we improve that skill in direct proportion to how lean and how muscular we become.
How, specifically, do we find those scant and elusive effective tools and productive protocols, the type and kind that enable the trainee to engineer their very own radical physical transformation? With so much bad information and disinformation and misinformation, all tainted by commercialism, how do we discover those modes and methods that deliver the dramatic results we seek? Elite trainers understand that to maximize results we need engage in two separate and distinct modes of training:
- strength training increases lean muscle mass
- cardiovascular training (in sync with disciplined eating) oxidizes body fat
Let us take a quick moment to dispel a persistent fitness myth – that, like the Yeti or Big Foot or the Loch Ness Monster, there exists a mythical training mode that delivers maximum strength and muscle-building results while simultaneously providing maximum fat burning results – the contention being that there exists a perfect two-for-one training protocol that combines strength training with cardio training and produces twice the results in half the time. This is a falsehood of the highest order. The very premise a physiological impossibility (for a variety of reasons) and a bad compromise at best. Those that attempt to wed the cardio and strength in one protocol end up with the worst of both worlds. Beware any fitness gurus that promise the magical 2 for 1 protocol panacea.
The athletic elite engage in hardcore resistance training sessions to build maximum muscle and strength. The athletic elite engage in separate and distinct cardio sessions to build stamina and melt off body fat. Hard training spikes the heart rate, boosts the metabolism, accelerates the caloric burn rate, improves raw power and strength and, in close coordination with a power-eating regimen, hard training causes the mobilization and oxidation of stored body fat. Through the coordinated blending of diet and exercise we “force” the body to draw down on its strategic fat reserves, body fat stored in fat storage sites located around the body; body fat is preferentially used as fuel to power activity.
An effective fitness game plan has two component parts: training and nutrition. Within the training matrix there are three separate and distinct training modes or disciplines; each training discipline needs to be routinely practiced.
- resistance training
- interval cardio
- steady-state cardio
The Resistance Training Gold Standard
Result-producing tools of choice: free-weight barbells and dumbbells
The King of all progressive resistance free-weight exercise: the deep squat
Within the realm of effective, result-producing strength training and muscle-building, the King, the Gold Standard, the tool and methodology of choice amongst the iron elite is free-weight barbell and dumbbell exercises done using hardcore training protocols. Results are defined as tangible, measurable, quantifiable, irrefutable and dramatic increases in strength, power and muscle mass.
Crude barbells and dumbbells, hoisted and tugged in ultra-basic exercise movement patterns, remain the undisputed heavyweight champion of resistance results. No mode or method, no machine or tool, none can come close to delivering the muscle-building results obtained using barbells and dumbbells. In the world of resistance training, crude and cumbersome is far more effective at inducing the adaptive response, hypertrophy, than smooth and easy.
Those slick, beautifully constructed resistance exercise machines can cost as much as an automobile. They have an amusement park ride feel about them. Machines are fun-to-use, comfy, with their lying or seated padded back rests and butt rests, these press and pull devices are decidedly inferior when it comes to producing the real results we seek.
Another inconvenient truth: you obtain superior results pushing or pulling on a pair of dirt-cheap, filthy dumbbells or a barbell while standing on your feet. Difficult free-weights trump exercise machines that they mimic every single time…why? Resistance machines prevent access to the 3rd dimension of tension.
- Resistance training machines, with their locked-in motor-pathway, eliminate the “3rd dimension of tension,” the need to control side-to-side motion. This lack of stabilizer activation dilutes and limits muscle and strength results obtained from the use of resistance machines. In the world of effective resistance training, hard and awkward trumps smooth and efficient. This is a tough lesson to learn.
- Free weight movements need to use a full and complete range-of-motion. Full ROM using free-weights force muscle stabilizers to maximally fire in order to keep the payload within the proscribed motor-pathway. Free-weights are cumbersome and this awkwardness is what makes them so effective at building power and muscle.
While the rest of the fitness world seeks ways to make resistance training easier,
the athletic elite seek ways to make resistance training harder
The CrossCore180® is a portable, lightweight (five pounds) training device that enables to user to engage in either straight resistance training protocols, or, pure cardio protocols. In the hardcore resistance training mode, results obtained by the CrossCore180 trump results obtained from resistance training exercise machines. The inherent stability built into a machine ensure its results are inferior to the results obtained using the inherently unstable CC180, particularly when in pulled-pin mode. When it comes to building muscle and power, instability creates maximal muscle stabilizer activation. In a wide-range of progressive resistance exercises the results obtained using the CrossCore180 compared favorably to the results obtained by the undisputed King of muscle and strength building: free-weight barbell and dumbbell progressive resistance exercises.
When it comes to muscle and strength building, the first order of business is defining what we mean when we refer to progressive resistance training results – how do we keep score? What are reasonable expectations in return for our efforts? In world of progressive resistance training, there are two defining characteristics. Two benchmarks we need to obtain in order to be deemed successful; we expect in return for our efforts…
- A dramatic increase in power and strength
- A dramatic increase in lean muscle mass
To be an effective resistance training tool, functionality needs be combined with a productive protocol. The right tool combined with the proper protocol induces a level of muscular stress sufficient to trigger the adaptive response, hypertrophy, i.e., muscle growth. Hypertrophy only occurs when a muscle is taxed, stressed maximally in some manner or fashion. Without intense stress, what reason is there for the adaptive response to occur? We understand that muscle stress can take many forms and that capacity is a shifting target that varies day to day, regardless, hypertrophy only occurs when we push up to or past the limits of our current capacities, in some manner or fashion.
The target muscle really doesn’t care what tool you use in your quest to tax the muscle maximally and thereby induce hypertrophy. Things now get subtle and complex: despite the visual magnificence of a progressive resistance machine, despite their awesome technology and clever design, despite the machine-makers claims to the contrary, an exercise machine that has a locked in groove, a frozen, up-or-down motor pathway will inherently produce lesser results than a proper free-weight exercise that the machine mimics. The machine is too stable.
The CrossCore180 in “pulled-pin” mode is the ultimate in instability. Properly used, in a wide variety of exercises, the CrossCore180 can create just as much three-dimensional resistance as free-weights and in these instances CrossCore results rival free-weight results.
Proper protocols are critical for inducing hypertrophy
The CrossCore180® in pulled-pin mode is more unstable than a barbell. Two hands clinch and steady the barbell payload whereas, the CC180, in pulled-pin mode, approximates the instability of a pair of dumbbells. If the goal is to maximally provoke muscle stabilizers, dumbbells and pulled-pin CrossCore create maximum instability and, ergo, maximum muscle stabilizer activation. To compliment maximal muscle stabilizer activation, the CC180 user can utilize extreme angle or payload amplification protocols that enable the exerciser to duplicate both the instability and the payload of the dumbbells. We will reap all the results associated with dumbbell training when we are able to use the CrossCore180 to replicate the dumbbells precise motor-pathway (technique,) the dumbbells inherent instability and the dumbbells payload.
Because you can cut your own motor-pathway on every single rep, the CrossCore180 user can easily duplicate any exercise technique they can imagine. To spice things up, the CrossCore user can experiment with extreme angles, partner-resisted reps, partner-assisted reps, slow rep speed, explosive rep speed, pauses, weighted backpacks and weighted vest. In the new universe of CrossCore HardCore, extreme angle, payload amplification and pristine and consistent exercise techniques utilizing full range-of-motion are what enable the CC180 to replicate free-weight results in an astounding number of exercises.
Does the muscle really care what mode is used to tax it maximally? As long as the technique and payload are identical, what matter the tool?
Max results? Combine instability, pristine technique, full ROM and pauses
The magical formula for sparking maximum muscular results and maximum strength gains in hardcore resistance training is a simple formula: regardless the exercise selected, use a full and complete range-of-motion (ROM,) use maximum payloads for a limited number of reps utilizing pristine technique. Partial ROM results in partial results; sub-maximal effort produces sub-maximal results. One highly favored intensity-boosting payload-amplifying technique is to vary the rep speed in order to vary the effect. Explosive reps build explosive horsepower. Grind reps, done at a purposefully reduced rep speed, builds tremendous low-end power and torque.
Classical free-weight progressive resistance training induces muscle hypertrophy (growth) by bringing the athlete to positive failure in usually ten reps or less. Classical free-weight progressive resistance training induces strength gains by enabling the athlete to equal or exceed shifting capacities on a continual basis. CrossCore180®, utilized in the ‘full rotational’ mode, induces maximal instability thereby causing muscle stabilizers to fire rapidly and repeatedly. From a muscle-building, intensity-amping standpoint, instability is invaluable.
Atop the unstableness, use altered rep speeds – purposefully slow or purposefully fast, along with full range-of-motion, excruciating pauses at the rep turn-around (where descent becomes ascent) along with partner assisted or resisted reps, Experiment with extreme angles, exaggerated techniques and the weighted vest or backpack. The intelligent and diligent CrossCore180 user has a tool that can be every bit as muscularly taxing (and, ergo, beneficial) as the Gold Standard resistance of resistance tools: barbells and dumbbells.
The only limit is your imagination.